How it began
The Elbasan script is an alphabet created for Albanian in the mid-eighteenth century and named after the city of Elbasan in central Albania, where it was invented. Its author is unknown. In 1965 the scholar Mahir Domi proposed Gregory of Durrës, a typographer of Moschopole, and other names have been suggested. The only document written in it is the Elbasan Gospel Manuscript, which Robert Elsie dated to 1761.
Before it existed
Before it, Albanian was written in borrowed scripts, including Latin, Greek, Arabic and Cyrillic. The Elbasan manuscript is not the oldest text in Albanian, but its alphabet is the oldest of seven known original alphabets created for the language. Glagolitic is also listed among the earlier scripts.
How it works
The script has 40 letters, each standing for a sound of Albanian. A few letters resemble Greek or Glagolitic forms, but most are considered original designs. The gospel manuscript comes from an Orthodox setting, the church of Saint Jovan Vladimir at Shijon near Elbasan, and the script shows the influence of Church Slavonic writing through the Archbishopric of Ohrid.
What lasted
The alphabet did not spread beyond its one manuscript, and later local inventions such as the Todhri and Vithkuqi alphabets followed it. The manuscript was bought around the Second World War by the collector Lef Nosi and was confiscated from him by the communist government in 1945. The Elbasan Gospel Manuscript is kept in the National Archives of Albania in Tirana. The script was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with version 7.0, which allows it to be typed and displayed on computers.
